PROLOGUE

“October 1, 20XX, at 2:31 p.m. Ms. Im Yuna has passed away.”

In the intensive care unit were Im Yuna’s mother, a doctor, and two nurses.

Her mother collapsed to the floor and began wailing like a storm had struck her.

“Even when she dies, that little bitch has to stab me in the back!”

Im Jin-sook, Im Yuna’s mother, showed not the slightest sign of grief at her daughter’s death.

Despite the nurses’ attempts to restrain her, she continued to rant and rave like a madwoman, and what she said next was even more outrageous.

“I’m going to end up buried in debt! What am I supposed to do about my money? Oh, woe is me! Woe is me! Bring her back to life! I said bring that bitch back to life!”

Jin-sook took her anger out on the innocent doctor. But Im Yuna, whose body had already grown cold, could no longer open her mouth or even her eyes.

“Tsk, tsk. How pitiful.”

A woman watched the scene and clicked her tongue sadly. Yet no one in the intensive care unit seemed aware of her presence.

“Sweet, gentle Yuna. You struggled your whole life, only to end up like this. You never once got to experience happiness, did you?”

The woman could only resent a world in which there was not a single person who understood how miserable Yuna’s life had been.

“Oh, what am I supposed to do now?! My money! Oh, woe is me!”

Jin-sook grew even more hysterical, wailing so loudly that her cries echoed throughout the hospital.

The woman narrowed her eyes as she watched Jin-sook.

For ten years, that woman had pushed her daughter into the entertainment industry, making her do all sorts of things simply because she had given birth to a pretty child. And now, standing in front of her daughter’s corpse, all she could do was cry about money.

The woman wondered whether Jin-sook was completely out of her mind.

“That’s right, Yuna. Go to a beautiful world now. You’re an angel, so you’ll be able to live happily in a more beautiful and peaceful place…”

“W-Wait! Her pulse is starting again!”

At that moment…

The woman felt as though her chest were about to burst from the unbearable pressure. It was the first pain she had experienced since dying.

For a long time, she had wandered through the afterlife like a drifter, swimming through the depths of the sea. But now, the relentless thread of life seemed to wrap itself around her entire body, binding her tightly like a rope and suffocating her.

It was a pain that only the living could understand. An excruciating sensation, as though her living flesh were being torn apart. Her lungs felt as if they were expanding like a balloon being inflated with air.

Overwhelmed by the suffocating sensation of what felt like impending death, the woman suddenly remembered the desperate struggle of her final moments, when she had fought with everything she had to stay alive.

She shot upright.

“Hah… Hah…”

A dull ache throbbed around her neck.

Warmth seeped into her previously cold body, melting away the chill that had settled deep within her.

Her pupils moved. Her fingers and toes began to twitch.

“M-Ms. Im Yuna! Her pulse had definitely stopped!”

The woman stared blankly at the doctor, who was frantically checking her condition with blurred, unfocused eyes.

But I’m not Im Yuna.

“It’s a-a miracle!”

I died when I was twenty-five. If I had lived, I would be fifty by now…

My name is Jeong Sui.

CHAPTER 1

Sui was a woman blessed with many talents and big dreams.

She loved singing and dancing in front of people, and at the age of seventeen, she moved to Seoul to pursue her dream of becoming a singer.

She had been through every kind of hardship imaginable.

Back in the 1980s, women who wanted to become singers were ridiculed as cheap entertainers, and women who wanted to dance were often treated like prostitutes.

Even so, Sui couldn’t give up on her dream. She went anywhere that would let her sing.

Whether it was an empty street with not a soul in sight or a crowded, bustling nightclub, it made no difference to her.

Even when no one responded to her performance, Sui felt truly alive whenever she sang.

It was a dream bordering on obsession. A precious, desperate dream. A dream of singing in front of ever-larger audiences.

But perhaps Sui had simply been born under an unlucky star, because her life ended when she was twenty-five.

She had spent her days singing and dancing herself to exhaustion, living as though there would be no tomorrow.

For twenty-five years, she wandered through the afterlife, swimming through its depths with blurred vision and muffled hearing.

Time there was different from the time in the living world. She could see, yet not really see. She could hear, yet not really hear. She simply drifted through an empty existence, without purpose or even a thought in her head.

She couldn’t remember why she had died. Perhaps that unanswered question had become an obsession, keeping her wandering through the afterlife for twenty-five years.

Sui stared endlessly into the mirror at Yuna’s beautiful, pale face. She moved Yuna’s fingers.

Then, awkwardly waving her hand, she greeted the reflection in the mirror.

“Hello. My name is Jeong Sui. You’re Im Yuna, aren’t you?”

They had lived in different eras, but they were the same age.

Why have I possessed Im Yuna’s body? Did someone take pity on my miserable life? Did I possess this beautiful celebrity so that I could sing and dance until my heart’s content one more time?

Just then, Jin-sook burst through the hospital room door. Without so much as a greeting, she grabbed Sui by the hair and shook her with almost superhuman strength.

“You try pulling this kind of stunt again! How many times is this now?!”

Apparently, Yuna had attempted to take her own life more than once.

Whatever had made Jin-sook so furious, she shook Sui by the hair even more violently.

Although it was Sui’s soul inhabiting the body now, she had only just regained consciousness and was still physically weak. Watching this woman treat a child who had barely woken up like that made Sui wonder whether her mother was completely insane.

At that moment, memories of Jin-sook’s past misdeeds flashed through Sui’s mind like scenes from a film.

It seemed that possessing Yuna’s body had somehow allowed her to see Yuna’s life.

Yuna, you’re pitiful too. You’ve had such an unfortunate life.

Your so-called mother never even had a job. She lived off you, sucking you dry like a parasite. And once you started making decent money, she took up gambling.

She even started businesses she had no idea how to run, and now she’s about to drown in debt.

With your pretty face, you could earn billions of won from a single commercial shoot. Your mother spent money recklessly, and this was the result. And now, the only source of money she had left—you—had even tried to kill yourself.

It must have been a devastating shock for her.

However…

This woman had picked the wrong person to mess with.

After all, she had just grabbed the hair of Jeong Sui, the woman who had once made a name for herself at Itaewon’s legendary 007 King Club.

“Let go.”

“I said, let go.”

“What… What the hell are you saying, you little bitch?!”

With her hair still in Jin-sook’s grasp, Sui tilted her head at an angle and glared ominously at her.

Intimidated by that look, Jin-sook released her hair before she even realized what she was doing.

“W-What? Why… Why are you glaring at me? W-What are you going to do if I glare back at you?!”

Judging by the malicious look on Jin-sook’s face, she seemed like the kind of woman who had spent her entire life going out of her way to do nasty things to others.

She was nothing like the gentle, pure-hearted Yuna.

Sui picked up the mirror beside her again and carefully brushed Yuna’s beautiful hair.

“Try grabbing this pretty hair again, and see what happens.”

“What? P-Pretty?”

“I had a personal principle when I was alive.”

“A p-principle? You die and come back to life, and now you’re spouting nonsense?!”

Looking straight at Jin-sook, Sui spoke firmly.

“Neither take what isn’t yours nor give away what you don’t owe. But if you do receive something, make sure you repay it. And if you can’t repay it, don’t use it carelessly.”

She would have loved to grab Jin-sook by the hair and give her a good shake in return. But this wasn’t her own body, and she had no idea when she might have to leave it. She needed to treat it with care, like a delicate glass marble, and avoid damaging it.

“So don’t treat me carelessly.”

“Huh? What the hell are you talking about after dying and coming back to life? Are you blind to the world around you now? How dare you glare at me and talk back like that?!”

Jin-sook jabbed her index finger toward Sui’s eyes in an unpleasant, threatening gesture.

She certainly seemed to have a special talent for getting under people’s skin.

When Jin-sook raised her hand again, apparently intending to grab Sui’s hair, Sui swiftly caught her by the wrist.

“Y-You…!”

“I told you not to treat me like that, didn’t I? I lose my mind when someone hits me on the head.”

“Y-You crazy little bitch! Have you lost your mind?!”

You’re the one who’s crazy.

After several minutes of glaring at each other, Jin-sook was the first to lower her eyes.

“J-Just shut up and get ready. You need to go to your scheduled engagements before word gets around about your little suicide stunt.”

“What? My schedule?”

Sui could only stare at her with her mouth hanging open.

This woman wanted someone who had been dead and brought back to life less than a day ago to go straight back to work?

The doctor had said that Yuna needed complete rest for the time being.

Of course, Sui’s body felt as good as new, almost as though she had been reborn. But from the outside, she was someone who had just come back from the dead. It was only reasonable for her to remain in the hospital for a few days so that the doctors could monitor her condition.

And yet, after barging in and grabbing her own daughter’s hair, Jin-sook was now demanding that she fulfill her schedule without even allowing her time to rest.

Is this woman really her biological mother?

While Sui was clicking her tongue in disbelief, Jin-sook said something even more outrageous.

“What’s so terrible about taking your clothes off that you’d rather kill yourself? It’s not like you’d be showing that much of your breasts! You’re an actress, aren’t you? There’s nothing wrong with filming an adult movie at least once.”

A stunt? A-an adult movie?

What kind of nonsense is this now…?

Just then, the doctor, who had been making his rounds outside the room, walked in.

Thinking this was her chance, Sui immediately flopped back onto the bed.

Putting on Yuna’s naturally delicate, gentle expression, she looked at the doctor as though she were in terrible pain.

The doctor’s eyes widened, and he shouted at Jin-sook.

“What on earth are you doing to your patient?! She needs complete rest right now! What are you going to do if something serious happens to her?!”

“W-What are you talking about?! She’s perfectly fine! Just a moment ago, she grabbed my wrist and even threatened me…”

“Is that really something you should be saying about your own daughter? And does she look perfectly fine to you?”

The doctor and Jin-sook both turned to look at Sui.

Sui let out an even more pitiful groan and buried her face in the pillow.

“If you cause another disturbance, I’ll call the police! Leave this room immediately! Patient Im Yuna needs complete rest!”

As it happened, everyone in the hospital already knew about Jin-sook’s outrageous behavior. Even the nurses glared at her with contempt.

In the end, Jin-sook was practically driven out of the room.

As she left, she kept making absurd threats about suing the hospital, demanding to know how they could possibly throw her out when she was the patient’s mother.

Once everyone had left, Sui was alone in the hospital room.

Lying on the bed, she gazed quietly at the ceiling and fell into thought.

This is turning into a real headache.

She thought she was beginning to understand why Yuna had resorted to such an extreme measure.

Perhaps it was simply Yuna’s unfortunate fate and miserable life. But now that Sui had possessed her body, Yuna’s emotions seemed to be flowing directly into her.

Fear. Resentment. Anger. An overwhelming, bottomless depression. A helplessness so profound that she didn’t want to do anything at all.

Being forced to bear all of Yuna’s despair by herself was unbearably painful.

Why did I have to possess this particular girl of all people?

“I’m going to lose my mind, seriously!”

Sui shouted at the innocent hospital ceiling, venting her frustration.

“Is this happening because I didn’t go back up right away? Why on earth are you doing this to me?!”